Sunday, February 28, 2010

The New Assault Weapons Ban

ABC News reports on the remarks made by Attorney General Eric Holder concerning gun control.

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today. "As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.

I'm not sure if I want to say, "Hooray, it's about time," or "Oh, brother, more empty promises."

Holder declined to offer any time frame for the reimplementation of the assault weapons ban, however.

"It's something, as I said, that the president talked about during the campaign," he said. "There are obviously a number of things that are -- that have been taking up a substantial amount of his time, and so, I'm not sure exactly what the sequencing will be."

During his confirmation hearing, Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee about other gun control measures the Obama administration may consider. "I think closing the gun show loophole, the banning of cop-killer bullets and I also think that making the assault weapons ban permanent, would be something that would be permitted under Heller,"

Dare I get my hopes up? Could Obama turn out to prove himself worthy of a better report card from the Bradys after all? Would it be possible for the administration to overcome the obstacles, namely for the assault weapons ban, coming up with a proper definition, and for the gun-show loophole, applying it to private sales outside of gun shows?

What's your opinion? Is this the beginning of the end for the pro-gun movement? Are gun and ammo sales going to skyrocket again? Or do you think these are impractical initiatives which will turn out to be more empty promises?

10 comments:

I saw the same story, and have no idea what brought it up again. Go to the link again, and check the date in the upper-left corner, under the byline.

Say this article were not about a year-old utterance of Holder's, from which he quickly back away, after 60-odd Democrat Congressman wrote him saying that they would oppose a new ban on so-called "assault weapons"--what's this "proper definition" you want?

What possible definition could ever make sense for such a ridiculous, arbitrary concept?

Really, Mikeb? I thought that even you had found yourself forced to admit that "assault weapon" bans were ridiculously arbitrary and capricious.

Heller is going to make a new federal AWB pretty hard to pass, it seems to me (even if much of Congress suddenly decided that political suicide would be fun, and were thus willing to vote for such legislation), by virtue of it specifying "dangerous and unusual" weapons as being subject to bans. AR-15s were already the best selling centerfire rifles before the Great Obama Gun Buy, and are now gaining popularity among hunters, with makers like Remington offering several models intended specifically for just that.

Granted, the "dangerous and unusual" line was part of the dicta, rather than the ruling itself, and is thus not binding, but it's certainly going to have some influence.

Of course, if McDonald goes the way it should, state and local AWBs will be ripe for challenge, too :-).

Now that we have revisited the Obama administration then, let's revisit the Obama administration now.

From the NY Times: "Asked by reporters about the Brady group’s critical report on the Obama administration, a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, pointed out that the latest F.B.I. statistics showed that violent crime dropped in the first half of 2009 to its lowest levels since the 1960s."

"What possible definition could ever make sense for such a ridiculous, arbitrary concept?"

For the gun banners, it's not hard to come up with a definition that makes sense. They want to ban all guns. If you add up the wish lists of the Brady Campaign and VPC, the only thing you're left with is black powder guns and maybe a few single shot rifles and shotguns.

Uh-oh. Anti-gunowner advocates like to sieze upon such statements and point out that no place has actually banned all guns for all people and few anti-gunowner advocates propose banning all guns for all people.

What they actually do intend may best be descibed as a gun-banning version of Zeno's Paradox: An unending number of partial bans which never quite reach a total ban.